words

i have become something
other than the sum of my own parts,
hands through thin and troubled hair,
eyes bloodshot and out of focus,
everything thrice dissolved
and offset by its own simulacral image.

blood memory and familial madness,
interactions with others,
a strange presence permeates
throughout the heart and follows
wherever i go, ghosts present
in the forms of lesson and mistake,
a cosmic dry heave grating
from and through the throat of god.

drowning in the piss and shit,
wading through the filth
and finding in it diamonds and dollars,
winks and smiles, things to keep
and thus define this life by,
night after night in the dark
to piece together some life of work
by which everyone else can learn from
so that i may go in peace,
fading like a smoke trail,
a breath, an aurora of grit and soul.

-S.C. Martinez